Antibiotics

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ANTIBIOTICS - PAGE 2

Dear Dr. Donohue: If you have a urinary tract infection, and antibiotics don't help, what's the answer? - M.C. Dear M.C.: First of all, consider that you might not be taking the antibiotics for a long enough period - a common failing. You should take the full prescribed dose. Also, you might not be taking an antibiotic matched up with the specific bacteria involved. Not all bacteria will respond to all antibiotics. Laboratory tests can determine if that is your problem. And you should consider that you might not have a urinary-tract infection at all. You could have some unrelated illness that produces similar symptoms.

Dear Dr. Donohue: After 30 years of going to one dentist, my wife and I changed for convenience. We made an appointment for teeth cleaning. In the forms that had to be filled out, my wife listed her hip replacement and my knee replacement, both 15 to 20 years ago. The dentist refused to clean our teeth until we took antibiotics before the visit. We haven't done this in the past 20 years. Did you ever hear of this? -E.B. Dear E.B.: Have you ever heard of endocarditis? It's a heart and heart valve infection.

Dear Dr. Donohue: Would an antibiotic keep someone from getting strep throat before it occurs? My daughter works for a dentist. One of the gals in the dentist's office got strep throat. Should my daughter get antibiotics so she won't get it in the future? Is it possible to avoid strep that way? - Mrs. L.G. Dear Mrs. L.G.: You are asking about antibiotic prophylaxis - the use of antibiotics as a preventive step. Sure it works, but such preventive measures are reserved for pretty unusual circumstances, such as a strep epidemic among military recruits or in other circumstances of large groups in confined quarters.

Dear Dr. Donohue: After falling off my boyfriend's motorcycle, I was hospitalized and put on antibiotics. When I returned home, I started having diarrhea that wouldn't stop. I landed back in the hospital with a diagnosis of C. difficile infection. I was given other antibiotics and the diarrhea stopped. Now I am home again, but I think I have it back. What can I do to get rid of this? - J.F. Dear J.F.: Clostridium difficile (klos-TRID-ee-um dif-uh-SEAL, "difficult") is an aptly named bacterium.

DEAR MAYO CLINIC: For years I've been told that I need to take antibiotics before my annual dental exam. But recently my dentist told me that this is no longer necessary. What changed, and is there anything wrong with continuing to take antibiotics, as I always have, just to be safe? ANSWER: Until recently, the American Heart Association recommended that people with certain heart conditions take antibiotics before dental work or other procedures to help prevent an infection called endocarditis.

Q. Do I need to take antibiotics before dental cleanings and other procedures to prevent infection in my hip prosthesis? A. In most cases, the answer is "no." It's an important question, though, because procedures such as teeth cleaning or scaling, colonoscopy, and cystoscopy can release bacteria into the bloodstream (a condition called bacteremia). For people with a prosthetic joint, the concern is that bacteria will cause an infection by attaching to, or "seeding," the artificial joint or the surrounding tissues.

By modifying the properties of the common antibiotic gentamicin, researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed what could become an effective treatment for many human genetic diseases, including cystic fibrosis (CF), Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Usher Syndrome and numerous cancers. The findings were published online by the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Gentamicin belongs to a class of antibiotics called aminoglycosides, which are used to treat a wide range of bacterial infections.